To get a Builder site with a child theme active to look like the child theme's demo site, it has to be built by way of arranging layouts, modules, widgets and in some cases, editing style.css.

To get a Builder site with a child theme active to look like the child theme's demo site, it has to be built by way of arranging layouts, modules, widgets and in some cases, editing style.css.

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When a child theme is activated, the site will not look like the demo site out of the box.

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When a child theme is activated, the site will NOT look like the demo site out of the box.

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When we create the demo sites, we make no adjustments to any .php or .css files within the theme. The only adjustments we make are within the WordPress dashboard. Like with all themes and child themes (both iThemes and other companies), every site need a little set up. For example, one will need to add some pages, write some posts, create menus, etc. In other words, every site need content. There is no way any theme can do all of these things for customers.

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For Thinner child theme (as an example), if one writes some posts, sets a [http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Thumbnails#Setting_a_Post_Thumbnail post thumbnail] for seven or more of those posts, and selects the slider extension in his/her layout (My Theme > Layouts & Views) that points to his/her main blog, he/she will find a comparable layout as the Thinner home page.

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As one can see, there is no way we can provide content for a customer. However, if one takes the time to set up WordPress and add default WordPress items, he/she will see that our child theme demos do represent what a child theme would look like when on a site with content.

If time permits, we will provide instructions on how to create a layout similar to the demo.

If time permits, we will provide instructions on how to create a layout similar to the demo.

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Q:I have created a layout for my Posts page. How do I apply this layout to the Posts page?

Q:I have created a layout for my Posts page. How do I apply this layout to the Posts page?

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A: Go to My Theme -> Layouts. Click on Configure Views, then Add View and associate '''Blog''' view with the layout you have created for the Posts page.

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A: Go to My Theme -> Layouts and Views. Click on Views tab, then Add View and associate '''Blog''' view with the layout you have created for the Posts page.

==All the pages are getting re-directed to front(home) page==

==All the pages are getting re-directed to front(home) page==

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==How do I display post excerpts as opposed to the full posts in my Posts page?==

==How do I display post excerpts as opposed to the full posts in my Posts page?==

'''If you would like to have a footer.php that looks like the screenshot below as starting point to use as is or further customize''', download [http://cl.ly/0z1C1X32243A30462F1q this] zip file, extract it and upload footer.php to your child theme directory.

The standard method of backing up database, editing the resulting .sql file to do a find and replace of source and destination URLs, importing the modified .sql to the new server and then uploading the files will not work in case of Builder sites.

The standard method of backing up database, editing the resulting .sql file to do a find and replace of source and destination URLs, importing the modified .sql to the new server and then uploading the files will not work in case of Builder sites.

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[http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/ BackupBuddy] is the only solution that lets you completely backup and restore a Builder site. For a discussion on the reason behind this, see post # 8 at [http://ithemes.com/forum/index.php?/topic/7451-how-do-i-restore-a-site-to-a-different-host-wo-losing-layouts-and-wo-using-backupbuddy/ this] forum thread.

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The reason for this is that simple find and replace can not handle [http://wpgarage.com/tips/data-portability-and-data-serialization-in-wordpress/ serialized data]. A solution that handles serialized data must be used. We have tested [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-migrate-db/ WP Migrate DB] successfully to manually copy a Builder site with no loss of data (layouts incl their IDs, Style Manager Styles, widgets etc.) from one location to another.

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=== Automated (simpler and faster) ===

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[http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/ BackupBuddy] is the only solution that lets you completely backup and restore a Builder site. For a discussion on the reason behind this, see post #8 at [http://ithemes.com/forum/index.php?/topic/7451-how-do-i-restore-a-site-to-a-different-host-wo-losing-layouts-and-wo-using-backupbuddy/ this] forum thread.

Tip: There are services like [http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/ this] and [http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ this] which lets you upload a regular image (jpg, png, gif etc.) and convert them to a .ico file.

Tip: There are services like [http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/ this] and [http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ this] which lets you upload a regular image (jpg, png, gif etc.) and convert them to a .ico file.

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# Connect to your web server using either the file manager in cPanel of your hosting account or a FTP client.

# Connect to your web server using either the file manager in cPanel of your hosting account or a FTP client.

# Download the latest versions of Style Manager (if you are using this plugin) and Builder SEO plugin (if you are using this plugin) zip files from your [http://ithemes.com/member/member.php Member Panel].

# Download the latest versions of Style Manager (if you are using this plugin) and Builder SEO plugin (if you are using this plugin) zip files from your [http://ithemes.com/member/member.php Member Panel].

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# Extract the contents of these plugins (whichever is being used i.e., present at wp-content/themes) and upload them to the corresponding directories in wp-content/uploads overwriting the existing ones.

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# Extract the contents of these plugins (whichever is being used i.e., present at wp-content/plugins) and upload them to the corresponding directories in wp-content/plugins overwriting the existing ones.

==How to upgrade Builder when a child theme isn't being used?==

==How to upgrade Builder when a child theme isn't being used?==

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From our observation, this is happening only on Macs. So if you have a spare Windows computer, try downloading Builder again from PC.

From our observation, this is happening only on Macs. So if you have a spare Windows computer, try downloading Builder again from PC.

Use the [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-comments-on-pages/ no comments on pages] plugin

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== How to assign a layout to all posts belonging to a specific category ==

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==I want to get rid of the text "Comments are closed" at the bottom of the content==

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No view exists which can be used for all single post pages belonging to a particular category.

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Add the following to your theme's style.css:

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There are design questions that need to be addressed before implementing such a view. What will happen if a post belongs to multiple categories? In such case suppose the user sets a view associating all posts from Category A and another one for all posts from Category B, and if a post belongs to both the categories there will be conflicting views which leads to the question: which layout should be applied for that post's single page?

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<pre class="brush:css;">

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The only way currently is to edit each post and set the layout manually.

The builder_filter_current_layout filter runs after the Layout selection process has finished and allows custom code to have the final say on what Layout is used. The example code will force the current Layout to be the one with an ID of "4e5f997043d8e" if the site is currently showing an individual post that is in the "news" category. If this condition isn't met, it returns the current Layout ID so that it doesn't change any of the other portions of the site. This can be modified to use any category and any Layout ID.

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Examples of customized footer.php: [http://d.pr/MwxJ 1]

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To find the ID for a Layout, go to the Layouts listing, copy the edit link for the desired Layout, paste the link somewhere, and grab the text after the last equal sign. For example, consider the following link:

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'''If you would like to have a footer.php that looks like the screenshot below as starting point to use as is or further customize''', download [http://ithemes.com/builder/misc/footer.php.zip this] zip file, extract it and upload footer.php to your child theme directory.

This is the code in footer.php just in case the download link does not work:

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To use the code, simply add it to your child theme's functions.php file."

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<pre class="brush:php;">

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See also: http://ithemes.com/forum/topic/22220-assigning-a-layout-for-post-page-by-category

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<?php

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==Does WordPress 3.0 menu system work in Builder?==

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function render_footer() {

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Oh yes! Even before the WordPress 3.0 menu system's final version got released. Then what about this message "Your theme supports 0 menus. Select which menu appears in each location."?, you may be asking. Well, just ignore it. Go ahead and create your menu at Appearance -> Menus, then edit your layout and in the navigation module's settings, select "Custom Menu - ''name''".

Oh yes! Even before the WordPress 3.0 menu system's final version got released. Then what about this message "Your theme supports 0 menus. Select which menu appears in each location."?, you may be asking. Well, just ignore it. Go ahead and create your menu at Appearance -> Menus, then edit your layout and in the navigation module's settings, select "Custom Menu - ''name''".

# [http://ithemes.com/codex/page/Builder_Documentation#How_to_install_Builder Set up Builder].

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# Once it is all ready, use BackupBuddy to do a full backup. The generated zip file should be in wp-content/uploads. Download importbuddy.php.

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# To learn how to restore the site to another location, watch the video [http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/backupbuddy-training/ here].

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If you are on Mac, install free version of [http://www.mamp.info/ MAMP] by following [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJFmogQVG8c this] video. Do from step 4 (the root folder on Mac will differ) onwards listed above. I have set "Sites" inside my user directory as the root.

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Screenshot:

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[[File:Screen shot 2011-07-23 at 9.24.59 AM.png|800px|thumb|none]]

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== Can Builder be used to create a fluid/responsive site? ==

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Very soon.

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Builder is becoming responsive.

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See http://ithemes.com/2012/10/10/responsive-is-coming-to-ithemes-builder/

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== I installed my Builder powered WordPress site at site.com/wordpress. How do I move it to site.com? ==

The extra divs in the markup generated by Builder aren't going to impact site performance. A standard WordPress site with a fresh installation of Builder with no plugins loads just fine without any slowness on a decent host like HostGator. Site slowness, if present is (in 99% of the cases) not coming from Builder, but from other factors like non-optimized images, a lot of scripts added by plugins, hosting setup etc.

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Things to check for when your site is loading slow:

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# Ensure that images (like the ones in header, sliders, Pages and Posts) are optimized for web.

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# Ensure that there are no references/calls to URLs (links within the site) that do not exist.

At a minimum, we have the same requirements as WordPress. As can be seen on the [http://wordpress.org/about/requirements/ WordPress requirements page], the minimum supported version of PHP at the time of writing this is 5.2.4.

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Builder will always be updated to handle any issues present in future PHP releases. A few versions back, Builder had some issues with the PHP 5.4.x releases. These issues have since been fixed.

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So, as of this very moment, Builder is officially compatible with 5.2.4+.

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== Why do you advise me to add CSS code at the end of style.css versus directly modifying within? ==

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The safest way to make such modifications is if you copy that code literally and add it as suggested in the location suggested. If you feel more confident hacking into existing code through changes that might cripple your site, feel free to do so, but we will not advise you to do so.

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For example, if the code doesn't work (which is highly unlikely, since we test all code before we suggest it), and it's added at the end of your stylesheet, it will NOT harm anything, and we can review what you did, and suggest on how to fix it (did you forget a { or a ; or another character). If however something went bad halfway your stylesheet, your site could easily be completely messed up and all css following any invalid code (for example a missing { or } ) will be invalid as well.

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This is our professional advise, but of course, you are free to choose whichever solution you think is best. Do note that it will frustrate our support efforts if there is an issue, and we have to search through a couple of hundred lines of css code to see what might or might not have been changed, opposed to just scrolling to the end of your stylesheet, and locate all customisations in one spot.

Most Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I learn about the basics of how Builder works?

What are child themes? Should I use a child theme?

It is a good idea to use a child theme (of Builder) as your active theme and not Builder directly. This will protect any modifications and customizations you might have done from being erased when you upgrade Builder.

Activated a child theme. How come my site does not look like the demo site?

To get a Builder site with a child theme active to look like the child theme's demo site, it has to be built by way of arranging layouts, modules, widgets and in some cases, editing style.css.

When a child theme is activated, the site will NOT look like the demo site out of the box.

When we create the demo sites, we make no adjustments to any .php or .css files within the theme. The only adjustments we make are within the WordPress dashboard. Like with all themes and child themes (both iThemes and other companies), every site need a little set up. For example, one will need to add some pages, write some posts, create menus, etc. In other words, every site need content. There is no way any theme can do all of these things for customers.

For Thinner child theme (as an example), if one writes some posts, sets a post thumbnail for seven or more of those posts, and selects the slider extension in his/her layout (My Theme > Layouts & Views) that points to his/her main blog, he/she will find a comparable layout as the Thinner home page.

As one can see, there is no way we can provide content for a customer. However, if one takes the time to set up WordPress and add default WordPress items, he/she will see that our child theme demos do represent what a child theme would look like when on a site with content.

If time permits, we will provide instructions on how to create a layout similar to the demo.

Example: This link has instructions on how a Builder site with Americana child theme can be made to look like its demo site.

Use a static page as front page

Q: I want to have a static page as front page (i.e., at www.mysite.com) and the blog posts to appear at another page, say www.mysite.com/blog. How do I do this?

Go to Settings -> Permalinks and set the permalink structure to something like /%postname%/

Create two empty pages (with no content in them) titled Home and Blog.

Apply a layout to the Posts page

Q:I have created a layout for my Posts page. How do I apply this layout to the Posts page?

A: Go to My Theme -> Layouts and Views. Click on Views tab, then Add View and associate Blog view with the layout you have created for the Posts page.

All the pages are getting re-directed to front(home) page

Ensure that the default layout has a content module. It is a common occurrence to construct site's home/front page layout with just widget bars, HTML modules etc. and leave it as default. The layout used for Pages, posts, archives, search, category pages etc. must have a content module or else, there will be no place for the content to show up in. Therefore, it is highly recommended that default layout has content module.

If you using some sort of Redirection plugin, check its settings/deactivate it (for troubleshooting)

Is it possible to have a 100% full width modules in Builder?

It is possible to have 100% fluid modules using by editing theme's functions.php. Click here for details.

How do I edit the footer?

Method 1

If you would like to have a footer.php that looks like the screenshot below as starting point to use as is or further customize, download this zip file, extract it and upload footer.php to your child theme directory.

Screenshot showing customized footer - Click to enlarge

This is the code in footer.php just in case the download link does not work:

How to backup and restore a WordPress site that uses Builder

Manually

The standard method of backing up database, editing the resulting .sql file to do a find and replace of source and destination URLs, importing the modified .sql to the new server and then uploading the files will not work in case of Builder sites.

The reason for this is that simple find and replace can not handle serialized data. A solution that handles serialized data must be used. We have tested WP Migrate DB successfully to manually copy a Builder site with no loss of data (layouts incl their IDs, Style Manager Styles, widgets etc.) from one location to another.

Automated (simpler and faster)

BackupBuddy is the only solution that lets you completely backup and restore a Builder site. For a discussion on the reason behind this, see post #8 at this forum thread.

How to add a custom favicon

go to using wp-dashboard > My Theme > Settings, click Favicon and select an icon, or upload your own

How to upgrade Builder?

How to fix "Fatal Error: Class 'ITStorage2' not found"

This happens because of upgrading Builder without first updating the associated plugins like Style Manager and SEO plugin.

This could have been avoided by following the instructions we provided on how to upgrade Builder here.

To fix the issue,

Connect to your web server using either the file manager in cPanel of your hosting account or a FTP client.

Download the latest versions of Style Manager (if you are using this plugin) and Builder SEO plugin (if you are using this plugin) zip files from your Member Panel.

Extract the contents of these plugins (whichever is being used i.e., present at wp-content/plugins) and upload them to the corresponding directories in wp-content/plugins overwriting the existing ones.

How to upgrade Builder when a child theme isn't being used?

It is always good to use a child theme of Builder as the active theme and not Builder directly. This will avoid custom changes to the theme files from being overwritten by the upgrade.

If you were not aware of this and have been directly using Builder as the active theme and would like to now upgrade to the latest version, follow this approach:

Take a full backup of your site using BackupBuddy. If purchasing BackupBuddy is not an option, take a backup of wp-content/themes/Builder directory and WordPress database (using phpMyAdmin or otherwise) at the least.

Make a note of all file changes (modifications and new additions) inside Builder directory. Usually modifications will be done to templates like index.php, single.php, archive.php and style.css.

Upload the latest default child theme to wp-content/themes. It can be downloaded from member panel.

Apply all changes that were noted in step 2 in wp-content/themes/BuilderChild-Default

How to center my navigation menu

How to assign a layout to all posts belonging to a specific category

No view exists which can be used for all single post pages belonging to a particular category.

There are design questions that need to be addressed before implementing such a view. What will happen if a post belongs to multiple categories? In such case suppose the user sets a view associating all posts from Category A and another one for all posts from Category B, and if a post belongs to both the categories there will be conflicting views which leads to the question: which layout should be applied for that post's single page?

The only way currently is to edit each post and set the layout manually.

The builder_filter_current_layout filter runs after the Layout selection process has finished and allows custom code to have the final say on what Layout is used. The example code will force the current Layout to be the one with an ID of "4e5f997043d8e" if the site is currently showing an individual post that is in the "news" category. If this condition isn't met, it returns the current Layout ID so that it doesn't change any of the other portions of the site. This can be modified to use any category and any Layout ID.

To find the ID for a Layout, go to the Layouts listing, copy the edit link for the desired Layout, paste the link somewhere, and grab the text after the last equal sign. For example, consider the following link:

Does WordPress 3.0 menu system work in Builder?

Oh yes! Even before the WordPress 3.0 menu system's final version got released. Then what about this message "Your theme supports 0 menus. Select which menu appears in each location."?, you may be asking. Well, just ignore it. Go ahead and create your menu at Appearance -> Menus, then edit your layout and in the navigation module's settings, select "Custom Menu - name".

Less Frequently Asked Questions

How do I disable comments on all Pages?

I want to get rid of the text "Comments are closed" at the bottom of the content

Add the following to your theme's style.css:

.nocomments {
display: none;
}

Uploaded images do not appear

1. Ensure that the image is saved in the right format (extension). For example, if a png file is incorrectly saved as .jpg, then it won't work. Two ways of checking this is opening the image in a) Photoshop b) Irfanview.

2. In your WP dashboard go to "Media" under "Settings" in the left column. Ensure that the path defined for uploads folder is "wp-content/uploads".
See also General FAQ.

3. Check to see if GD image library support is enabled in your hosting. This can be checked by saving the following as a php file, say phpinfo.php and accessing it from the URL like yoursite.com/phpinfo.php.

<?php phpinfo();?>

Tip: While uploading an image in image module if you want a fully wide image (i.e., no sidebar) ensure that image width is the same as that of layout. Also specify the exact image height in the module's settings. This will avoid the image from getting stretched disproportionately.

The theme you are currently using isn't widget-aware

Q: I can't put any widgets in the theme and keep getting this pop-up "The theme you are currently using isn’t widget-aware, meaning that it has no sidebars that you are able to change. For information on making your theme widget-aware, please follow these instructions."

How to remove bullets above tabs in Tabber Widget widgets

How to show blog posts at site's front page (/) as well as at another Page (/blog)

At Settings -> Reading, ensure that Front page is set to display latest posts. This is the default setting in WordPress.

Create a new Page (or edit an existing one) named say, Blog, ensure that it is blank, set the Template to Blog Template and publish/update it.

[Optional] If you would like to apply a layout to front page, go to My Theme -> Layouts, create a layout (or duplicate existing one) for it, go to Configure Views, Add View and add associate Home view with the layout created for front page.

[Optional] If you would like to apply a layout to Blog page, edit the Page and select your desired layout from Custom Layout meta box.

How to disable Builders built-in SEO functions

In your WordPress backend, go to My Theme -> Settings and set 'Would You like to use post tags as META keywords on single posts?' to NO (Yes is the default).

Then add the following code your child theme's functions.php as described.

What is the recommended way to edit theme templates like index.php and archive.php?

How to change the name of a child theme?

Where is functions.php?

One should never make changes in functions.php inside parent Builder directory. functions.php in child theme directory should be the one to make changes in. Some child themes will have functions.php and some don't. If this file is not present in child theme directory, create a new file named functions.php, place opening (<?php) and closing (?>) PHP tags, save and upload it to child theme directory using a FTP client. Alternately cPanel's file manager also lets us create files on the server.

Here is how a sample fresh functions.php file looks like:

<?php
?>

Any code that we advise you to add in functions.php must be added before the closing PHP tag.

Which Builder themes are mobile compatible?

With Builder, any of our child themes could be used as mobile themes simply by setting up your layout to be more narrow like the size of the iPhone screen.

Here are a few things to consider with mobile themes though:

Load times are slow, so you will want to use a theme that doesn't have many images to load. Any of the Foundation themes are a good example of this (among others).

None of our existing child themes have any gesturing built in to them, so some of the gestures that are very useful on the iPhone won't exist in child themes.

We do offer the Mobile plugin, which comes with a set of themes and a simple style manager that will allow you to match the colors of your mobile theme to the colors of your standard theme. You should have access to the Mobile plugin in your member area.

What are the minimum requirements for running Builder

The same as those needed for running WordPress 3.2 namely: at least php 5.2.4 and MySQL 5+.

Once it is all ready, use BackupBuddy to do a full backup. The generated zip file should be in wp-content/uploads. Download importbuddy.php.

To learn how to restore the site to another location, watch the video here.

If you are on Mac, install free version of MAMP by following this video. Do from step 4 (the root folder on Mac will differ) onwards listed above. I have set "Sites" inside my user directory as the root.

I installed my Builder powered WordPress site at site.com/wordpress. How do I move it to site.com?

My site is loading slow

The extra divs in the markup generated by Builder aren't going to impact site performance. A standard WordPress site with a fresh installation of Builder with no plugins loads just fine without any slowness on a decent host like HostGator. Site slowness, if present is (in 99% of the cases) not coming from Builder, but from other factors like non-optimized images, a lot of scripts added by plugins, hosting setup etc.

Things to check for when your site is loading slow:

Ensure that images (like the ones in header, sliders, Pages and Posts) are optimized for web.

Ensure that there are no references/calls to URLs (links within the site) that do not exist.

What are the requirements for using Builder?

At a minimum, we have the same requirements as WordPress. As can be seen on the WordPress requirements page, the minimum supported version of PHP at the time of writing this is 5.2.4.

Builder will always be updated to handle any issues present in future PHP releases. A few versions back, Builder had some issues with the PHP 5.4.x releases. These issues have since been fixed.

So, as of this very moment, Builder is officially compatible with 5.2.4+.

Why do you advise me to add CSS code at the end of style.css versus directly modifying within?

The safest way to make such modifications is if you copy that code literally and add it as suggested in the location suggested. If you feel more confident hacking into existing code through changes that might cripple your site, feel free to do so, but we will not advise you to do so.

For example, if the code doesn't work (which is highly unlikely, since we test all code before we suggest it), and it's added at the end of your stylesheet, it will NOT harm anything, and we can review what you did, and suggest on how to fix it (did you forget a { or a ; or another character). If however something went bad halfway your stylesheet, your site could easily be completely messed up and all css following any invalid code (for example a missing { or } ) will be invalid as well.

This is our professional advise, but of course, you are free to choose whichever solution you think is best. Do note that it will frustrate our support efforts if there is an issue, and we have to search through a couple of hundred lines of css code to see what might or might not have been changed, opposed to just scrolling to the end of your stylesheet, and locate all customisations in one spot.